This Zimbabwe aff plan text will most likely include aid to NGOs--we're still working on this.
JT
1AC
Contention 1: Hidden Sanctions
The US provides Antiretrovirals to Zimbabwe, but the assistance is too limited
Plus News, 5/10/06 http://www.plusnews.org/report .aspx?reportid=39584 Zimbabweans have had to make do with very little HIV/AIDS donor funding, which Lynde Francis described as trying to manage an "ever-expanding problem with an ever-diminishing pot of money". She said it was "understandable" that donors wouldn't want to "prop up" the existing government, but pointed out that by "withdrawing [funding] it's not the regime suffering, it's the man on the street". Chinhaira agreed, saying, "It really is true that when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." According to a 2004 analysis by the World Bank, neighbouring Zambia received US$187 in aid for every HIV-positive citizen, whereas Zimbabwe's strained relations with some donors meant it received just $4 per person.After a three-year delay, a US $10.3 million grant by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is finally making its way to Zimbabwe. But activists have stressed that this paled in comparison to what countries "just across the [Zambezi] river" were receiving from international donors.Nevertheless, AIDS NGOs are managing to make a difference. The way Francis sees it, "it's like we're on a speeding train with no brakes, and we're trying to save as many people as we can on a day-to-day basis".
Motivated by political reasons, the US refuses to provide aid to Zimbabwe, while 160,000 Zimbabweans die every year from AIDS.
Dr. Frenk Guni, HIV/AIDS and public health policy expert and consultant, winner of the 2003 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights, recipient of the 2002 International Award for Leadership in HIV/AIDS Programming, has provided services for UNAIDS, WHO and many more (the Organization of African Unity, US Department of Health and Human Services, USAID, Emory University Faculties of Public Health and Medicine, PACT, AED, The Synergy Project, The Futures Group, Doctors Concerned About AIDS, Global Council on Foundations, US State Department, the Global Fund for TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS and, most recently, Georgetown UniversityÕs Institute for Health Care Research and Policy. Guni has served as an expert on various HIV/AIDS panels including the Human Resources Services Administration Clinical Experts on HIV/AIDS and Public Health, CDC Special Emphasis Panel of Reviewers, Indiana University School of Medicine-continued medical education & HIV/AIDS and Clinical Considerations for Rolling out HIV Anti-Retroviral Therapy.), 3/30/05, “Death by Denial: A Case for Mugabe”, http://www.worldpress.org /Africa/2056.cfm[jsidney]
It is difficult to overstate the trauma and hardships that the increase in AIDS related morbidity and mortality has brought upon children in Zimbabwe. According to Unicef, one in five children in Zimbabwe is an orphan and a child dies of AIDS every 15 minutes. These statistics are not just accurate but an underestimation of the gravity of the problems bedeviling Zimbabwe. Children are being denied a basic family life, they lack love, attention and affection, and they’re similar to children living in war-ravaged countries. They are pressed into caring for ill and dying parents, removed from school to help with the household or pressed into sex for survival to pay for necessities. They have less access to health care services. They are often treated harshly or abused by foster or step parents and society at large. Relatives and neighbors charged with caring for these children frequently take the children’s inheritance leaving them more vulnerable to mortality, illness and exploitation. These problems are occurring in a society where children are already undernourished and impoverished. How does the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria among other philanthropic agencies explain a per capita spending on H.I.V./AIDS of $4 per head per annum in Zimbabwe compared to $187 per head in neighboring Zambia where both prevalence and incidence rates are lower? Across Zimbabwe over a million children are experiencing poverty, enormous mental stress from witnessing the illness and death of their parents and loved ones, and a profound sense of real insecurity. These inadequately met concerns are the fundamental human rights and needs of children and there is an urgent requirement to ameliorate their physical and psychosocial distress and suffering. It can not be argued otherwise that the health care system in Zimbabwe has long since collapsed and Zimbabwe’s internal efforts to fight AIDS have in fact been constantly thwarted and undermined by the international community for “technical” and yet ultimately political reasons. I was one of the first persons to concur that the Zimbabwean government’s proposals to the Global Fund had serious technical weaknesses, but the suggested actions put together by experts were never implemented. This in itself demonstrates a more sinister motive to discredit the AIDS response by Zimbabwe based purely on political indifference of the international community and indigence by the Zimbabwean 1AC government. Furthermore, there is no logical explanation as to why Zimbabwe was not included in President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief when all of its surrounding neighbors including South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique are focus countries receiving funding from the $15 billion pledge.
“There are only two possible responses to suffering on this scale. We can turn our eyes away in resignation and despair, or we can take decisive, historic action to turn the tide against this disease ….” President George W. Bush said, demonstrating his global leadership in fighting AIDS. Alas on AIDS in Zimbabwe the United States has led the entire donor and international community in not just choosing to “turn away in resignation and despair” but in punishing Zimbabweans for the “sins” of their government and political leaders. Over 160,000 people living with AIDS will die this year alone in Zimbabwe. This will undoubtedly result in likely increased instability, crime and other social problems and human rights abuses. H.I.V. infection levels are likely to increase significantly as people in desperate circumstances have to concentrate on immediate survival needs, not on protecting themselves from long term health problems. Lack of sufficient care now is a recipe for the increased spread of H.I.V. infection and social insecurity. No “terrorist attack” or war has ever threatened the lives of over 40 million people globally at one time.The institutional response to AIDS internationally has tended to mirror personal responses including initial denial, blame, repression and ultimately a varied degree of acceptance. However for Zimbabwe the primary limitations are inadequate international and local funding, weak political response exasperated by donor fatigue and a morbid desire by the international community to punish President Robert Mugabe and his government for alleged human rights abuses, flawed electoral laws and an unpalatable land reform and redistributing program.
Contention 2 is AIDS:
The lack of US assistance condemns millions to die from AIDS
Washington Post, 4/20/05
(In Rural Zimbabwe AIDS Still Means Death, http://www.washingtonpost.com /wp-dyn/articles/A2441-2005Apr1 9.html)
AIDS is no longer an unavoidable death sentence in most of the world. Even in much of Africa, billions of dollars in international aid has made it a chronic, controllable disease for a small but growing number of patients with access to antiretroviral medicine. But this relief is arriving in a profoundly uneven way, dividing the continent into areas where AIDS is survivable and areas where it is not.
By this measure, Mataruse could not live in a worse place. Zhulube is a remote region in southern Zimbabwe, a country whose public health system has been decimated by economic collapse and international isolation. In southern Africa, the epicenter of the global pandemic, no country is as far behind in treating AIDS, according to World Health Organization statistics. An estimated 1.8 million Zimbabweans have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Of that group, 295,000 need antiretroviral treatment immediately, but only 8,000 -- less than 3 percent -- are getting it, according to a December report from WHO. The need for treatment is growing far more quickly than the capacity to provide it, the report shows. Mataruse's local clinic, an arduous three-mile walk from her home, lacks not only antiretroviral medicine but also the kits needed to test for HIV. Even the basics of modern health care -- syringes, intravenous fluid, antibiotics and elastic bandages -- are frequently out of stock, a nurse at the clinic said. There are no doctors there. The nurses who have chronicled Mataruse's decline have never mentioned either HIV or AIDS, she said, and neither term appears in the battered paper folder of medical records she keeps. The surge of international funding that is beginning to prolong the lives of Africans with AIDS has bypassed Zimbabwe almost entirely. The United Nations, the World Bank and President Bush's AIDS initiative are focusing on other countries, in large part because President Robert G. Mugabe's reputation as one of the most undemocratic and anti-Western African leaders has kept donors away from Zimbabwe. "There is tension between the international community and the government of Zimbabwe," said James Elder, a UNICEF spokesman in Harare, the capital. But he added, "Don't take it out on children. Let's move the attention a little bit away from politics and put it on people." The average amount of international funding each year in southern Africa is $74 per personinfected with HIV, according to UNICEF. In Zimbabwe, that figure is $4. The discrepancy is even more dramatic when compared with sums received over the border in Zambia, where international donors provide $187 per infected person. And though Zimbabwe is slated to get a grant of $14 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the same agency rejected a request in December for more than $250 million, citing technical flaws in the proposal. The results can be seen in the relative availability of medicine. In Zambia, antiretroviral drugs are reaching 13 percent of those who need them, according to WHO statistics. Zimbabwe's southwestern neighbor, Botswana, which has a much higher per capita income and receives substantial health care funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is getting antiretrovirals to 50 percent of those who need it. Even in South Africa, which has been widely criticized for its 1AC sluggish response to AIDS, antiretrovirals are reaching 7 percent of those who need the drugs. In major South African cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town, the waiting list for government-subsidized AIDS medicines has virtually disappeared, doctors there said.
Lack of funds for HIV prevention has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths
Action Contre la Faim, 4/4/06
(Zimbabwe Insight into the Humanitarian Crisis and Food Politics, http://www.kubatana.net/html /archive/foodse/060504acf.asp ?sector=FOODSE p10)
The people’s health conditions The life expectancy has dropped to 33.9 years compared to 61 years during the early 1990s 10.
This is primarily due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic but also to the decline of social and health services. With an estimated national prevalence rate of 20,1% 11, Zimbabwe is one of the countries the most affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. More than 3,000 persons die every weekby HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, some 170,000 people per year in a country of 11.6 millions. The number of orphans is estimated to rise to 910,000 in 2005, some 20% of the nation’s children. Out of 295,000 people in need of treatment, only about 9,000 receive antiretroviral treatment, which can greatly extend the life of someone infected with the deadly virus 12. The lack of resources but also the decline of the health system explain these figures; as a matter of fact, the quality and the access to health services in Zimbabwe have been deteriorating over the recent years as a result of under funding, emigration of health staff, and the impact of HIV/AIDS. The maternal mortality ratio, a good indicator of the quality of health services, deteriorated from 610 per 100,000 live births in 1994 to 1100 per 100,000 live births in 2000. Child mortality has doubled from 59 to 123 per 1,000 live births between 1989 and 2004 13. Besides, a number of infectious and epidemic prone diseases have re-emerged in the past few years: • one of the country’s worst ever years as regards malaria was 2003-2004, as a result of failure of the main prevention programme of residual spraying. Already this year there have been more than 650,000 cases and more than 1000 deaths. • cholera has occurred in Zimbabwe every year since 1998, with very high case fatality rates during outbreaks. • Zimbabwe is one of the most affected countries as regards tuberculosis: incidence has increased five-fold between 1992 and 2002. The rise has been attributed mainly to HIV; 80% of TB cases are estimated to be HIV positive. • lastly, rabies and anthrax have made major comebacks as a direct result of the current decline in the capacity for the health care delivery services. Prevention of both diseases required strong intersectoral action, which is currently lacking, regular and widespread vaccine availability and appropriate prevention and control programmes.
1AC
AIDS in Zimbabwe will cause further collapse of democracy and escalation to genocide
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p28)
Absent AIDS assistance Mugabe’s fall would lead to another dictator, who cannot prevent instability
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p24) Challenges to Mugabe’s power from members of the country’s military, political, and economic elites may also be prompted by the general contraction of Zimbabwe’s economy, which will create competition over increasingly scarce fiscal resources. The growing potential for political violence and coups d’état may be welcomed by opponents of the Mugabe regime, but they should recognize that any successor regime would face a similar situation of worsening economic and political destabilization while the HIV/AIDS epidemic rages unabated.
1AC
Failure to prevent AIDS in Zimbabwe now permanently destroys good governance
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p27)
AIDS causes corruption, state collapse, and escalating wars in Zimbabwe
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p15)
Among the numerous indirect threats posed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, three stand out. First, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is dramatically reducing Zimbabwean life expectancy and quality of life through disease-induced morbidity and mortality and by increasing disease-related poverty. Second, the disease is systematically eroding the economic strength of the country, shrinking productivity, precipitating a decline in savings, increasing the country’s debt load, and diminishing its store of human capital. Third, the epidemic is systematically eroding the institutions of governance (such as police and military forces) while depleting state capacity, thus dramatically narrowing the range of policy options available to policymakers. These factors combine to produce both the motive and the opportunity for intrastate violence between political elites, classes, or ethnicities and may even generate state failure. The epidemic may also provide increasing incentive for the Zimbabwean state to engage in violence against its own citizens, as political elites seek to maintain their grip on power in a destabilized and disaffected society.
Contention 3 is ethics
Our failure to provide Zimbabwe with health assistance to fight AIDS is politically motivated, condemning the innocent for the Government’s transgressions—we are ethically obligated to take a non-discriminatory approach to assistance programs
Action Contre la Faim, 4/4/06
(Zimbabwe Insight into the Humanitarian Crisis and Food Politics, http://www.kubatana.net/html /archive/foodse/060504acf.asp ?sector=FOODSE) The vulnerable people of Zimbabwe are the direct victims of these tensions: the debates around the humanitarian situation are so politically charged that it has become increasingly difficult to assess objectively people’s needs and to design appropriate interventions. The mutual mistrust between the Government and the international community limits funding by donors, but also results in increased bureaucratic and practical restrictions by the government to the work of humanitarian organisations and in a reduced collaboration between them and Government services. In May 2002, the British Foreign Minister, Clare Short stated that "People must not be punished because their government is corrupt". Yet the Director of UNICEF noted in March 2005 that "despite the world’s fourth highest rate of HIV infection and the greatest rise in child mortality in any nation, Zimbabweans receive just a fraction of donor funding compared to 1AC other countries in the region" and appealed to donors "to look beyond politics and to differentiate between the politics and the people of Zimbabwe". Indeed, HIV/AIDS and other diseases kill today far more than malnutrition which has remained in Zimbabwe at one of the lowest levels in Africa. Yet, most media and NGOs keep focusing on food issues, the bulk of the assistance remains food aid, and a silent embargo is maintained on HIV/AIDS and institutional support funding for health services. It seems essential today for NGOs to depoliticize humanitarian issues in Zimbabwe. NGOs interventions may aim not only at bringing assistance to the people but also at improving the working environment in the country; this should include the promotion of a shared understanding of the challenges faced by the communities and of the priorities of the assistance. In order to do so, it is paramount to reject and to fight any form of discrimination in the assistance, whether it comes from the Government or from donors. It is also essential to produce and disseminate objective information and analysis on livelihood situations in order to generate adequate funding and to promote appropriate relief and recovery interventions that will benefit to the vulnerable people of Zimbabwe. Recommendations To the international community: Western governments shall not impose sanctions to the government that adversely affect the vulnerable people of the country, already strongly impacted by the economic crisis and the climate constraints. They shall rather promote a non-discriminatory approach of the assistance programmes.
Our hidden sanctions on Zimbabwe conceal the instrumentalization of people in euphemism, causing nuclear war and genocide
Elias Davidsson, editor for The Centre for Research on Globalization, Revised November 2003
(The Mechanism of economic sanctions: Changing Perceptions and Euphemisms, http://www.aldeilis.net /english/images/stories /economicsanctions/debate.pdf, Original from March 2002) In order to effectively describe a complex and highly politicized phenomenon, such as economic sanctions, the utmost care in the choice of terminology is necessary. Among the tools of politicians figure their creative use of language, including the invention of euphemisms and obfuscatory expressions. Discussing the role of euphemisms in political discourse, Stanley Cohen writes: The most familiar form of reinterpretation is the use of euphemistic labels and jargon. These are everyday devicesfor masking, sanitising, and conferring respectability by using palliative terms that deny or misrepresent crueltyor harm, giving them neutral or respectable status. Orwell's original account of the anaesthetic function of political language - how words insulate their users and listeners from experiencing fully the meaning of what they are doing - remains the classic source on the subject[28]. Judge Weeramantry, in his Separate Dissenting Opinion on The legality of nuclear weapons (International Court of Justice (Advisory Opinion) (1996)), castigates [...] the use of euphemistic language - the disembodied language of military operations and the polite language of diplomacy. They conceal the horror of nuclear war, diverting attention to intellectual conceptssuch as self-defence, reprisals, and proportionate damage which can have little relevance to a situation of total destruction. Horrendous damage to civilians and neutrals is described as collateral damage, because it was not directly intended; incineration of cities becomes "considerable thermal damage". One speaks of "acceptable levels of casualties", even if megadeaths are involved. Maintaining the balance of terror is described as "nuclear preparedness"; assured destruction as "deterrence", total devastation of the environment as "environmental damage". Clinically detached from their human context, such expressions bypass the world of human suffering, out of which humanitarian law has sprung. With regard to economic sanctions we will show that euphemisms have been used (a) t o hide the mechanism by which such measures are expected to achieve their declared purposes; (b) to imply that these measures target wrongdoers; and (c) to imply that such measures are compatible with humanitarian principles. Regardless whether such obfuscation is deliberate, represents a “blind spot”, or results from the lack of intellectual rigour, the effects of such abuse of language are not innocent. One of the first tasks of those who study economic sanctions is to bring order into the use of terminology. We will review some of the most common linguistic devices that have been used to mask the reality of economic sanctions.
(a) How are economic sanctions expected to achieve their declared purpose? The main declared purpose ofeconomicsanctions is mostly to induce a government to comply with the demands of the sanctioning parties. This is done by crippling the economy in the targeted territory. While the demands imposed along sanctions may be fully legitimate, this article is solely concerned with the mechanism used to secure the compliance with these demands as well as with some of the linguistic devices that mask this mechanism. The mechanism by which economic sanctions are expected to achieve their declared objectives is seldom discussed in public[29]. The implied theory of economic sanctions is that by crippling the economy within a territory, the authorities of that territory are prevented from satisfying popular needs such as the supply of commodities, services and work. Massive shortages that ensue are supposed to cause popular discontent, which would translate into a call for the removal of the authorities or a pressure on the authorities to comply with external demands. The theoryis thus predicated on causing civilian pain to achieve a political gain. Cortright and Lopez, invoking other commentators, dismiss this theory of economic sanctions as “naive” and claim that “there is no direct transmission mechanism by which social suffering is translated into political change”[30]. Yet they do not provide a more plausible explanation of the mechanism by which economic sanctions (as distinct from other adverse measures) are expected to yield the compliance of country’s leaders with external demands. It is not surprising that politicians are loath to acknowledge 1AC that a political goal is to be achieved by inflicting severe suffering on a civilian population. To hurt innocent civilians in order to extract concessions from a government is, after all, what is defined in U.S. law as international terrorism[31]!
(b) Who are the true targets of economic sanctions ?
As the mechanism of economic sanctions requires the generation of popular discontent within the targeted territory and as such measures inevitably affect the lives of the civilian population, it is axiomatic that the targets of such measures are those who happen to live in that territory, without distinction. This fact must be borne in mind when examining the language used to address the various aspects of economic sanctions. Depending upon their position in society, however, individuals and families may suffer the consequences of economic sanctions to a different degree. Those who suffer most from economic sanctions are vulnerable and powerless population groups whereas the powerful and the wealthy can often avoid the most adverse consequences and may, sometimes, even enrich themselves from the inevitable emergence of black markets. It is thus accurate to say that economic sanctions target the civilian population of a given territory as a whole, particularly the most vulnerable segments of society. In making this statement, it is presumed that those who adopt a policy intend its foreseeable consequences. Certainly those who maintain a given policy after having been put at notice of its severe consequences, must be deemed to have intended such consequences.
(c) Euphemisms used to mask the mechanism of economic sanctions and the identity of the targets
The examples provided below represent euphemisms commonly used by writers, media and politicians to mask the wholesale and indiscriminate nature of economic sanctions.
“Target state” Various authors sometimes refer to “senders” and “targets” of economic sanctions as shortcuts[32]. The term “sender” refers to the individual state, the regional organization or the international organisation imposing the sanctions. The term “target” usually refers to the state against which the sanctions are imposed. While the term “sender” serves adequately as a shortcut for the entity or entities who impose economic sanctions, the term “target” masks the identity of the true addressees.While sanctions are typically coercive, they cannot, obviously, coerce an object, let alone an abstract construct, such as “state” or “country”. While material objects can be targeted for destruction, only human beings can be the targets of coercion[33]. Unless measures are specifically coercing the decision-makers in the targeted territory in their individual capacity (in which case the designation economic sanctions would not be applicable), the targets of economic sanctions are simply all those who reside in the targeted territory. From the point of view of the victims of economic sanctions it doesnot matter whether the expression “target state” is a deliberate obfuscation or resultsfrom an inadvertent or convenient “blind spot”, that makes them invisible “targets”.One variant of the expression “target state”[34] is “offending nation”[35],anexpression which imputes collective culpability and provides indirect justification forimposing collective injury[36]. The conceptual foundation of the concept “target state” rests on the view of the globalsystem as a set of interacting black boxes (states) whose contents is irrelevant. Thefollowing example illustrates the chilling implications of such conceptualization: The purpose of Article 41of the UN Charter is not to exact retribution, but to provide for the international excommunication of a delinquent State as an incentive to reform. The Security Council thus seeks to cut out a - temporarily - cancerous cell from the global body[37]. Here a state is compared to a ‘cancerous cell’ which should be removed from the globalbody, apparently without consideration of its human contents. Such conceptualizationechoes the perspective and the language of Adolf Hitler, as reflected in Mein Kampf[38]. By treating states as entities that possess an autonomous will and existence, rather thanthe mere symbolic representation for the individual human beings who live within thegiven area, perpetrators of the most odious crimes against humanity could in the past insulate themselves against pangs of conscience[39].
Conflating a population with its leader Another obfuscation used to imbue economic sanctions with an ethical veneer, is to imply that they target a particular loathsome individual rather than a population. The following example is culled from the proceedings of the debate that took place in the U.S. Congress before the Gulf war of 1991. Senator B. Bradley refers there to Iraq in the third person male and singular, conflating it invidiously with the person of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein[40]. We would isolate Iraq from the international economic system, with sanctions to deny him markets for his export, oil, to freeze his foreign financial assets, and to deny his access to spare parts and supplies on which his military machine depends.” (emphasis added). The obfuscatory nature of this statement is readily apparent from this unusual syntax. But beyond this obvious fact, the author actually conflates a country’s markets and foreign financial assets with those of one person, a fantastic claim by itself.Income from Iraqi oil exports were massively used, not only to finance Iraq’s repressive apparatus and a large and ineffective army, but also to develop Iraq’s infrastructure, health services and school system, reduce poverty and secure access to an adequate supply of nutritional food for all segments of the population. Among items banned by the sanctions, at first, were not only military goods as suggested above, but equally hygienic articles, books, kitchen utensils, children toys and the like. Even food supplies for Iraqi civilians were initially included in the trade ban.
1AC
This regulation of medicine on the basis of national interest is part of a dangerous ideology which inevitably results in genocidal nuclear wars.
Robert Lifton, professor of psychiatry @ Harvard, 1986
(The Nazi Doctors, __http://www.holocaust-history .org/lifton/LiftonT503.shtml__ p503)
But my witness does not end with the Nazis. I want to extract from what they did whatever can be psychologically useful for us to know now. Nazi doctors doubled in murderous ways; so can others. Doubling provides a connecting principle between the murderous behavior of Nazi doctors and the universal potential for just such behavior. The same is true of the capacity to murder endlessly in the name of national-racial cure. Under certain conditions, just about anyone can join a collective call to eliminate every last one of the alleged group of carriers of the “germ of death.” Yet my conclusion is by no means that “we are all Nazis.” We are not all Nazis. That accusation eliminates precisely the kind of moral distinctions we need to make. One of these distinctions concerns how, with our universal potential for murder and genocide, we for the most part hold back from such evil. A sensitive healer aghast at discovering her own impulses to slap a patient who had become unruly wrote to me of this “problem of our daily humanity.” But we learn from the Nazis not only the crucial distinction between impulse and act, but the critical importance of larger ideological currents in connecting the two in ways that result in mass evil. Those connections and steps are my witness — not the undifferentiated moral condemnation of everybody. But there is an additional witness I cannot avoid making: the bearing of this study on the nuclear technology of genocide which now haunts us all. The Holocaust we have been examining can help us avoid the next one. We need consider only the possible transfer to the nuclear-weapons threat not only of individual doubling but of all of these genocidal principles: the fear of the “germ of death,” of a contagious illness (Soviet communism or American capitalism) threatening the life of the group (the United States or the Soviet Union); a promise of revitalizing cure via an absolutized vision (of American virtue and Soviet evil, or the reverse) that justifies “killing them all” and excludes the suicidal dimension of that vision; the mobilization of claims of spiritual altruism and scientific. truth, and of opportunities for transcendence, as one presses toward mass killing in the name of healing; the designation of killing professionals and professional killers for the task, along with increasingly perfected technology and high bureaucratic organization that radically deamplify the genocidal actions; and finally, the creation of a widely embraced model of the genocidal self through collective patterns of “nuclearism” (embrace of the weapons out of attraction to their ultimate power and to their high technology), and visions of idealistic purification and ultimate sacrifice extending even to the lure of Armageddon. Must all this happen? Some of it has already, but the rest need not. Any witness tells of the danger of some form of repetition of what one has observed, in order to encourage steps to prevent that repetition. One listens to what Loren Eiseley called “the dark murmur that rises from the abyss beneath us, and that draws us with uncanny fascination,”³ and realizes that the murmur is our own, a whisper of danger that must be heard before it becomes a hopeless genocidal scream.
1AC
Plan: The United States federal government should allocate all necessary additional funding to non-governmental organizations for the prevention and treatment of**Human Immunodeficiency Virus**/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in Zimbabwe. We’ll clarify.
Contention 4 is solvency:
We must take action for the cause of humanity by funding NGOS to respond to AIDS in Zimbabwe
Dr. Frenk Guni, HIV/AIDS and public health policy expert and consultant, 3/30/05, “Death by Denial: A Case for Mugabe”, http://www.worldpress.org /Africa/2056.cfm[jsidney]
This is a time for decisive leadership, a time for action, a time to put aside political demagoguery; this is a time to think and act for the cause of humanity. We need to re-focus and channel resources to rebuild and strengthen Zimbabwe’s health care and response mechanism. Agreed, there remains a question of accountability on the part of the Zimbabwe government, butsurely there are ways to go around that threat. For instance, channel the AIDS response funds through the United Nations Theme Group on H.I.V./AIDS or through the World Health Organization or more directly to N.G.O.s — not withstanding the recently passed N.G.O. Bill of Zimbabwe which to this day the president has not assented to. The bill in material terms does not prohibit external funding to N.G.O.s that are providing humanitarian services not linked to the internal politics of Zimbabwe. If we do not act fast and now, history and posterity will judge us all for our inaction. Zimbabwe’s children are a generation in peril and it’s our time to show that we care. Yes it is our time to show that the international community will stand by the most vulnerable and weak in their time of need. It is not the “body politick” that has H.I.V./AIDS in Zimbabwe and are bearing the burden of care. But it is the ordinary men, women and children who are now looking up to the international community for their own survival. Mugabe empirically allows unconditional aid when needed The Telegraph, 5/20/05, “Mugabe admits he needs food aid to rescue Zimbabwe,” <http://www.telegraph.co.uk /news/main.jhtml?xml=/news /2005/05/19/wzim19.xml> President Robert Mugabe yesterday abandoned his confident forecasts of a bumper harvest in Zimbabwe and confessed that international food aid was needed to avoid famine. Mr Mugabe, who declared last year that Zimbabweans would be "choked" if aid was "foisted" upon them, climbed down and agreed to meet the head of the United Nations World Food Programme. Having previously pledged that his seizure of white-owned farms would make Zimbabwe self-sufficient, Mr Mugabe said he would accept outside help if it came without conditions.
US leadership is key to rally support to prevent AIDS
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p38)
Prevention solves—empirically proven
Lori Bollinger and John Stover, economists with the Futures Group International, 9/99, “The Policy Porject, The Economic Impact of AIDS in South Africa”
JT
1AC
Contention 1: Hidden Sanctions
The US provides Antiretrovirals to Zimbabwe, but the assistance is too limited
Plus News, 5/10/06
http://www.plusnews.org/report .aspx?reportid=39584
Zimbabweans have had to make do with very little HIV/AIDS donor funding, which Lynde Francis described as trying to manage an "ever-expanding problem with an ever-diminishing pot of money". She said it was "understandable" that donors wouldn't want to "prop up" the existing government, but pointed out that by "withdrawing [funding] it's not the regime suffering, it's the man on the street". Chinhaira agreed, saying, "It really is true that when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." According to a 2004 analysis by the World Bank, neighbouring Zambia received US$187 in aid for every HIV-positive citizen, whereas Zimbabwe's strained relations with some donors meant it received just $4 per person. After a three-year delay, a US $10.3 million grant by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is finally making its way to Zimbabwe. But activists have stressed that this paled in comparison to what countries "just across the [Zambezi] river" were receiving from international donors. Nevertheless, AIDS NGOs are managing to make a difference. The way Francis sees it, "it's like we're on a speeding train with no brakes, and we're trying to save as many people as we can on a day-to-day basis".
Motivated by political reasons, the US refuses to provide aid to Zimbabwe, while 160,000 Zimbabweans die every year from AIDS.
Dr. Frenk Guni, HIV/AIDS and public health policy expert and consultant, winner of the 2003 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights, recipient of the 2002 International Award for Leadership in HIV/AIDS Programming, has provided services for UNAIDS, WHO and many more (the Organization of African Unity, US Department of Health and Human Services, USAID, Emory University Faculties of Public Health and Medicine, PACT, AED, The Synergy Project, The Futures Group, Doctors Concerned About AIDS, Global Council on Foundations, US State Department, the Global Fund for TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS and, most recently, Georgetown UniversityÕs Institute for Health Care Research and Policy. Guni has served as an expert on various HIV/AIDS panels including the Human Resources Services Administration Clinical Experts on HIV/AIDS and Public Health, CDC Special Emphasis Panel of Reviewers, Indiana University School of Medicine-continued medical education & HIV/AIDS and Clinical Considerations for Rolling out HIV Anti-Retroviral Therapy.), 3/30/05, “Death by Denial: A Case for Mugabe”, http://www.worldpress.org /Africa/2056.cfm [jsidney]
It is difficult to overstate the trauma and hardships that the increase in AIDS related morbidity and mortality has brought upon children in Zimbabwe. According to Unicef, one in five children in Zimbabwe is an orphan and a child dies of AIDS every 15 minutes. These statistics are not just accurate but an underestimation of the gravity of the problems bedeviling Zimbabwe.Children are being denied a basic family life, they lack love, attention and affection, and they’re similar to children living in war-ravaged countries. They are pressed into caring for ill and dying parents, removed from school to help with the household or pressed into sex for survival to pay for necessities. They have less access to health care services. They are often treated harshly or abused by foster or step parents and society at large. Relatives and neighbors charged with caring for these children frequently take the children’s inheritance leaving them more vulnerable to mortality, illness and exploitation. These problems are occurring in a society where children are already undernourished and impoverished.
How does the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria among other philanthropic agencies explain a per capita spending on H.I.V./AIDS of $4 per head per annum in Zimbabwe compared to $187 per head in neighboring Zambia where both prevalence and incidence rates are lower?
Across Zimbabwe over a million children are experiencing poverty, enormous mental stress from witnessing the illness and death of their parents and loved ones, and a profound sense of real insecurity. These inadequately met concerns are the fundamental human rights and needs of children and there is an urgent requirement to ameliorate their physical and psychosocial distress and suffering. It can not be argued otherwise that the health care system in Zimbabwe has long since collapsed and Zimbabwe’s internal efforts to fight AIDS have in fact been constantly thwarted and undermined by the international community for “technical” and yet ultimately political reasons. I was one of the first persons to concur that the Zimbabwean government’s proposals to the Global Fund had serious technical weaknesses, but the suggested actions put together by experts were never implemented. This in itself demonstrates a more sinister motive to discredit the AIDS response by Zimbabwe based purely on political indifference of the international community and indigence by the Zimbabwean
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government. Furthermore, there is no logical explanation as to why Zimbabwe was not included in President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief when all of its surrounding neighbors including South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique are focus countries receiving funding from the $15 billion pledge.
“There are only two possible responses to suffering on this scale. We can turn our eyes away in resignation and despair, or we can take decisive, historic action to turn the tide against this disease ….” President George W. Bush said, demonstrating his global leadership in fighting AIDS. Alas on AIDS in Zimbabwe the United States has led the entire donor and international community in not just choosing to “turn away in resignation and despair” but in punishing Zimbabweans for the “sins” of their government and political leaders.
Over 160,000 people living with AIDS will die this year alone in Zimbabwe. This will undoubtedly result in likely increased instability, crime and other social problems and human rights abuses. H.I.V. infection levels are likely to increase significantly as people in desperate circumstances have to concentrate on immediate survival needs, not on protecting themselves from long term health problems. Lack of sufficient care now is a recipe for the increased spread of H.I.V. infection and social insecurity.
No “terrorist attack” or war has ever threatened the lives of over 40 million people globally at one time. The institutional response to AIDS internationally has tended to mirror personal responses including initial denial, blame, repression and ultimately a varied degree of acceptance. However for Zimbabwe the primary limitations are inadequate international and local funding, weak political response exasperated by donor fatigue and a morbid desire by the international community to punish President Robert Mugabe and his government for alleged human rights abuses, flawed electoral laws and an unpalatable land reform and redistributing program.
Contention 2 is AIDS:
The lack of US assistance condemns millions to die from AIDS
Washington Post, 4/20/05
(In Rural Zimbabwe AIDS Still Means Death, http://www.washingtonpost.com /wp-dyn/articles/A2441-2005Apr1 9.html)
AIDS is no longer an unavoidable death sentence in most of the world. Even in much of Africa, billions of dollars in international aid has made it a chronic, controllable disease for a small but growing number of patients with access to antiretroviral medicine. But this relief is arriving in a profoundly uneven way, dividing the continent into areas where AIDS is survivable and areas where it is not.
By this measure, Mataruse could not live in a worse place. Zhulube is a remote region in southern Zimbabwe, a country whose public health system has been decimated by economic collapse and international isolation. In southern Africa, the epicenter of the global pandemic, no country is as far behind in treating AIDS, according to World Health Organization statistics. An estimated 1.8 million Zimbabweans have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Of that group, 295,000 need antiretroviral treatment immediately, but only 8,000 -- less than 3 percent -- are getting it, according to a December report from WHO. The need for treatment is growing far more quickly than the capacity to provide it, the report shows. Mataruse's local clinic, an arduous three-mile walk from her home, lacks not only antiretroviral medicine but also the kits needed to test for HIV. Even the basics of modern health care -- syringes, intravenous fluid, antibiotics and elastic bandages -- are frequently out of stock, a nurse at the clinic said. There are no doctors there. The nurses who have chronicled Mataruse's decline have never mentioned either HIV or AIDS, she said, and neither term appears in the battered paper folder of medical records she keeps. The surge of international funding that is beginning to prolong the lives of Africans with AIDS has bypassed Zimbabwe almost entirely. The United Nations, the World Bank and President Bush's AIDS initiative are focusing on other countries, in large part because President Robert G. Mugabe's reputation as one of the most undemocratic and anti-Western African leaders has kept donors away from Zimbabwe. "There is tension between the international community and the government of Zimbabwe," said James Elder, a UNICEF spokesman in Harare, the capital. But he added, "Don't take it out on children. Let's move the attention a little bit away from politics and put it on people." The average amount of international funding each year in southern Africa is $74 per person infected with HIV, according to UNICEF. In Zimbabwe, that figure is $4. The discrepancy is even more dramatic when compared with sums received over the border in Zambia, where international donors provide $187 per infected person. And though Zimbabwe is slated to get a grant of $14 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the same agency rejected a request in December for more than $250 million, citing technical flaws in the proposal. The results can be seen in the relative availability of medicine. In Zambia, antiretroviral drugs are reaching 13 percent of those who need them, according to WHO statistics. Zimbabwe's southwestern neighbor, Botswana, which has a much higher per capita income and receives substantial health care funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is getting antiretrovirals to 50 percent of those who need it. Even in South Africa, which has been widely criticized for its
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sluggish response to AIDS, antiretrovirals are reaching 7 percent of those who need the drugs. In major South African cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town, the waiting list for government-subsidized AIDS medicines has virtually disappeared, doctors there said.
Lack of funds for HIV prevention has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths
Action Contre la Faim, 4/4/06
(Zimbabwe Insight into the Humanitarian Crisis and Food Politics, http://www.kubatana.net/html /archive/foodse/060504acf.asp ?sector=FOODSE p10)
The people’s health conditions The life expectancy has dropped to 33.9 years compared to 61 years during the early 1990s 10.
This is primarily due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic but also to the decline of social and health services. With an estimated national prevalence rate of 20,1% 11, Zimbabwe is one of the countries the most affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. More than 3,000 persons die every week by HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, some 170,000 people per year in a country of 11.6 millions. The number of orphans is estimated to rise to 910,000 in 2005, some 20% of the nation’s children. Out of 295,000 people in need of treatment, only about 9,000 receive antiretroviral treatment, which can greatly extend the life of someone infected with the deadly virus 12. The lack of resources but also the decline of the health system explain these figures; as a matter of fact, the quality and the access to health services in
Zimbabwe have been deteriorating over the recent years as a result of under funding, emigration of health staff, and the impact of HIV/AIDS. The maternal mortality ratio, a good indicator of the quality of health services, deteriorated from 610 per 100,000 live births in 1994 to 1100 per 100,000 live births in 2000. Child mortality has doubled from 59 to 123 per 1,000 live births between 1989 and 2004 13. Besides, a number of infectious and epidemic prone diseases have re-emerged in the past few years: • one of the country’s worst ever years as regards malaria was 2003-2004, as a result of failure of the main prevention programme of residual spraying. Already this year there have been more than 650,000 cases and more than 1000 deaths. • cholera has occurred in Zimbabwe every year since 1998, with very high case fatality rates during outbreaks. • Zimbabwe is one of the most affected countries as regards tuberculosis: incidence has increased five-fold between 1992 and 2002. The rise has been attributed mainly to HIV; 80% of TB cases are estimated to be HIV positive. • lastly, rabies and anthrax have made major comebacks as a direct result of the current decline in the capacity for the health care delivery services. Prevention of both diseases required strong intersectoral action, which is currently lacking, regular and widespread vaccine availability and appropriate prevention and control programmes.
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AIDS in Zimbabwe will cause further collapse of democracy and escalation to genocide
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p28)
Absent AIDS assistance Mugabe’s fall would lead to another dictator, who cannot prevent instability
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p24)
Challenges to Mugabe’s power from members of the country’s military, political, and economic elites may also be prompted by the general contraction of Zimbabwe’s economy, which will create competition over increasingly scarce fiscal resources. The growing potential for political violence and coups d’état may be welcomed by opponents of the Mugabe regime, but they should recognize that any successor regime would face a similar situation of worsening economic and political destabilization while the HIV/AIDS epidemic rages unabated.
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Failure to prevent AIDS in Zimbabwe now permanently destroys good governance
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p27)
AIDS causes corruption, state collapse, and escalating wars in Zimbabwe
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p15)
Among the numerous indirect threats posed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, three stand out. First, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is dramatically reducing Zimbabwean life expectancy and quality of life through disease-induced morbidity and mortality and by increasing disease-related poverty. Second, the disease is systematically eroding the economic strength of the country, shrinking productivity, precipitating a decline in savings, increasing the country’s debt load, and diminishing its store of human capital. Third, the epidemic is systematically
eroding the institutions of governance (such as police and military forces) while depleting state capacity, thus dramatically narrowing the range of policy options available to policymakers. These factors combine to produce both the motive and the opportunity for intrastate violence between political elites, classes, or ethnicities and may even generate state failure. The epidemic may also provide increasing incentive for the Zimbabwean state to engage in violence against its own citizens, as political elites seek to maintain their grip on power in a destabilized and disaffected society.
Contention 3 is ethics
Our failure to provide Zimbabwe with health assistance to fight AIDS is politically motivated, condemning the innocent for the Government’s transgressions—we are ethically obligated to take a non-discriminatory approach to assistance programs
Action Contre la Faim, 4/4/06
(Zimbabwe Insight into the Humanitarian Crisis and Food Politics, http://www.kubatana.net/html /archive/foodse/060504acf.asp ?sector=FOODSE)
The vulnerable people of Zimbabwe are the direct victims of these tensions: the debates around the humanitarian situation are so politically charged that it has become increasingly difficult to assess objectively people’s needs and to design appropriate interventions. The mutual mistrust between the Government and the international community limits funding by donors, but also results in increased bureaucratic and practical restrictions by the government to the work of humanitarian organisations and in a reduced collaboration between them and Government services. In May 2002, the British Foreign Minister, Clare Short stated that "People must not be punished because their government is corrupt". Yet the Director of UNICEF noted in March 2005 that "despite the world’s fourth highest rate of HIV infection and the greatest rise in child mortality in any nation, Zimbabweans receive just a fraction of donor funding compared to
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other countries in the region" and appealed to donors "to look beyond politics and to differentiate between the politics and the people of Zimbabwe". Indeed, HIV/AIDS and other diseases kill today far more than malnutrition which has remained in Zimbabwe at one of the lowest levels in Africa. Yet, most media and NGOs keep focusing on food issues, the bulk of the assistance remains food aid, and a silent embargo is maintained on HIV/AIDS and institutional support funding for health services. It seems essential today for NGOs to depoliticize humanitarian issues in Zimbabwe. NGOs interventions may aim not only at bringing assistance to the people but also at improving the working environment in the country; this should include the promotion of a shared understanding of the challenges faced by the communities and of the priorities of the assistance. In order to do so, it is paramount to reject and to fight any form of discrimination in the assistance, whether it comes from the Government or from donors. It is also essential to produce and disseminate objective information and analysis on livelihood situations in order to generate adequate funding and to promote appropriate relief and recovery interventions that will benefit to the vulnerable people of Zimbabwe. Recommendations To the international community:
Western governments shall not impose sanctions to the government that adversely affect the vulnerable people of the country, already strongly impacted by the economic crisis and the climate constraints. They shall rather promote a non-discriminatory approach of the assistance programmes.
Our hidden sanctions on Zimbabwe conceal the instrumentalization of people in euphemism, causing nuclear war and genocide
Elias Davidsson, editor for The Centre for Research on Globalization, Revised November 2003
(The Mechanism of economic sanctions: Changing Perceptions and Euphemisms, http://www.aldeilis.net /english/images/stories /economicsanctions/debate.pdf, Original from March 2002)
In order to effectively describe a complex and highly politicized phenomenon, such as economic sanctions, the utmost care in the choice of terminology is necessary. Among the tools of politicians figure their creative use of language, including the invention of euphemisms and obfuscatory expressions. Discussing the role of euphemisms in political discourse, Stanley Cohen writes: The most familiar form of reinterpretation is the use of euphemistic labels and jargon. These are everyday devices for masking, sanitising, and conferring respectability by using palliative terms that deny or misrepresent cruelty or harm, giving them neutral or respectable status. Orwell's original account of the anaesthetic function of political language - how words insulate their users and listeners from experiencing fully the meaning of what they are doing - remains the classic source on the subject[28]. Judge Weeramantry, in his Separate Dissenting Opinion on The legality of nuclear weapons (International Court of Justice (Advisory Opinion) (1996)), castigates [...] the use of euphemistic language - the disembodied language of military operations and the polite language of diplomacy. They conceal the horror of nuclear war, diverting attention to intellectual concepts such as self-defence, reprisals, and proportionate damage which can have little relevance to a situation of total destruction. Horrendous damage to civilians and neutrals is described as collateral damage, because it was not directly intended; incineration of cities becomes "considerable thermal damage". One speaks of "acceptable levels of casualties", even if megadeaths are involved. Maintaining the balance of terror is described as "nuclear preparedness"; assured destruction as "deterrence", total devastation of the environment as "environmental damage". Clinically detached from their human context, such expressions bypass the world of human suffering, out of which humanitarian law has sprung. With regard to economic sanctions we will show that euphemisms have been used (a) t o hide the mechanism by which such measures are expected to achieve their declared purposes; (b) to imply that these measures target wrongdoers; and (c) to imply that such measures are compatible with humanitarian principles. Regardless whether such obfuscation is deliberate, represents a “blind spot”, or results from the lack of intellectual rigour, the effects of such abuse of language are not innocent. One of the first tasks of those who study economic sanctions is to bring order into the use of terminology. We will review some of the most common linguistic devices that have been used to mask the reality of economic sanctions.
(a) How are economic sanctions expected to achieve their declared purpose?
The main declared purpose of economic sanctions is mostly to induce a government to comply with the demands of the sanctioning parties. This is done by crippling the economy in the targeted territory. While the demands imposed along sanctions may be fully legitimate, this article is solely concerned with the mechanism used to secure the compliance with these demands as well as with some of the linguistic devices that mask this mechanism. The mechanism by which economic sanctions are expected to achieve their declared objectives is seldom discussed in public[29]. The implied theory of economic sanctions is that by crippling the economy within a territory, the authorities of that territory are prevented from satisfying popular needs such as the supply of commodities, services and work. Massive shortages that ensue are supposed to cause popular discontent, which would translate into a call for the removal of the authorities or a pressure on the authorities to comply with external demands. The theory is thus predicated on causing civilian pain to achieve a political gain. Cortright and Lopez, invoking other commentators, dismiss this theory of economic sanctions as “naive” and claim that “there is no direct transmission mechanism by which social suffering is translated into political change”[30]. Yet they do not provide a more plausible explanation of the mechanism by which economic sanctions (as distinct from other adverse measures) are expected to yield the compliance of country’s leaders with external demands. It is not surprising that politicians are loath to acknowledge
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that a political goal is to be achieved by inflicting severe suffering on a civilian population. To hurt innocent civilians in order to extract concessions from a government is, after all, what is defined in U.S. law as international terrorism[31]!
(b) Who are the true targets of economic sanctions ?
As the mechanism of economic sanctions requires the generation of popular discontent within the targeted territory and as such measures inevitably affect the lives of the civilian population, it is axiomatic that the targets of such measures are those who happen to live in that territory, without distinction. This fact must be borne in mind when examining the language used to address the various aspects of economic sanctions. Depending upon their position in society, however, individuals and families may suffer the consequences of economic sanctions to a different degree. Those who suffer most from economic sanctions are vulnerable and powerless population groups whereas the powerful and the wealthy can often avoid the most adverse consequences and may, sometimes, even enrich themselves from the inevitable emergence of black markets. It is thus accurate to say that economic sanctions target the civilian population of a given territory as a whole, particularly the most vulnerable segments of society. In making this statement, it is presumed that those who adopt a policy intend its foreseeable consequences. Certainly those who maintain a given policy after having been put at notice of its severe consequences, must be deemed to have intended such consequences.
(c) Euphemisms used to mask the mechanism of economic sanctions and the identity of the targets
The examples provided below represent euphemisms commonly used by writers, media and politicians to mask the wholesale and indiscriminate nature of economic sanctions.
“Target state” Various authors sometimes refer to “senders” and “targets” of economic sanctions as shortcuts[32]. The term “sender” refers to the individual state, the regional organization or the international organisation imposing the sanctions. The term “target” usually refers to the state against which the sanctions are imposed. While the term “sender” serves adequately as a shortcut for the entity or entities who impose economic sanctions, the term “target” masks the identity of the true addressees. While sanctions are typically coercive, they cannot, obviously, coerce an object, let alone an abstract construct, such as “state” or “country”. While material objects can be targeted for destruction, only human beings can be the targets of coercion[33]. Unless measures are specifically coercing the decision-makers in the targeted territory in their individual capacity (in which case the designation economic sanctions would not be applicable), the targets of economic sanctions are simply all those who reside in the targeted territory. From the point of view of the victims of economic sanctions it does not matter whether the expression “target state” is a deliberate obfuscation or results from an inadvertent or convenient “blind spot”, that makes them invisible “targets”. One variant of the expression “target state”[34] is “offending nation”[35] , an expression which imputes collective culpability and provides indirect justification for imposing collective injury[36]. The conceptual foundation of the concept “target state” rests on the view of the global system as a set of interacting black boxes (states) whose contents is irrelevant. The following example illustrates the chilling implications of such conceptualization: The purpose of Article 41of the UN Charter is not to exact retribution, but to provide for the international excommunication of a delinquent State as an incentive to reform. The Security Council thus seeks to cut out a - temporarily - cancerous cell from the global body[37]. Here a state is compared to a ‘cancerous cell’ which should be removed from the global body, apparently without consideration of its human contents. Such conceptualization echoes the perspective and the language of Adolf Hitler, as reflected in Mein Kampf[38]. By treating states as entities that possess an autonomous will and existence, rather than the mere symbolic representation for the individual human beings who live within the given area, perpetrators of the most odious crimes against humanity could in the past insulate themselves against pangs of conscience[39].
Conflating a population with its leader
Another obfuscation used to imbue economic sanctions with an ethical veneer, is to imply that they target a particular loathsome individual rather than a population. The following example is culled from the proceedings of the debate that took place in the U.S. Congress before the Gulf war of 1991. Senator B. Bradley refers there to Iraq in the third person male and singular, conflating it invidiously with the person of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein[40]. We would isolate Iraq from the international economic system, with sanctions to deny him markets for his export, oil, to freeze his foreign financial assets, and to deny his access to spare parts and supplies on which his military machine depends.” (emphasis added). The obfuscatory nature of this statement is readily apparent from this unusual syntax. But beyond this obvious fact, the author actually conflates a country’s markets and foreign financial assets with those of one person, a fantastic claim by itself. Income from Iraqi oil exports were massively used, not only to finance Iraq’s repressive apparatus and a large and ineffective army, but also to develop Iraq’s infrastructure, health services and school system, reduce poverty and secure access to an adequate supply of nutritional food for all segments of the population. Among items banned by the sanctions, at first, were not only military goods as suggested above, but equally hygienic articles, books, kitchen utensils, children toys and the like. Even food supplies for Iraqi civilians were initially included in the trade ban.
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This regulation of medicine on the basis of national interest is part of a dangerous ideology which inevitably results in genocidal nuclear wars.
Robert Lifton, professor of psychiatry @ Harvard, 1986(The Nazi Doctors, __http://www.holocaust-history .org/lifton/LiftonT503.shtml__ p503)
But my witness does not end with the Nazis. I want to extract from what they did whatever can be psychologically useful for us to know now. Nazi doctors doubled in murderous ways; so can others. Doubling provides a connecting principle between the murderous behavior of Nazi doctors and the universal potential for just such behavior. The same is true of the capacity to murder endlessly in the name of national-racial cure. Under certain conditions, just about anyone can join a collective call to eliminate every last one of the alleged group of carriers of the “germ of death.” Yet my conclusion is by no means that “we are all Nazis.” We are not all Nazis. That accusation eliminates precisely the kind of moral distinctions we need to make. One of these distinctions concerns how, with our universal potential for murder and genocide, we for the most part hold back from such evil. A sensitive healer aghast at discovering her own impulses to slap a patient who had become unruly wrote to me of this “problem of our daily humanity.” But we learn from the Nazis not only the crucial distinction between impulse and act, but the critical importance of larger ideological currents in connecting the two in ways that result in mass evil. Those connections and steps are my witness — not the undifferentiated moral condemnation of everybody. But there is an additional witness I cannot avoid making: the bearing of this study on the nuclear technology of genocide which now haunts us all. The Holocaust we have been examining can help us avoid the next one. We need consider only the possible transfer to the nuclear-weapons threat not only of individual doubling but of all of these genocidal principles: the fear of the “germ of death,” of a contagious illness (Soviet communism or American capitalism) threatening the life of the group (the United States or the Soviet Union); a promise of revitalizing cure via an absolutized vision (of American virtue and Soviet evil, or the reverse) that justifies “killing them all” and excludes the suicidal dimension of that vision; the mobilization of claims of spiritual altruism and scientific. truth, and of opportunities for transcendence, as one presses toward mass killing in the name of healing; the designation of killing professionals and professional killers for the task, along with increasingly perfected technology and high bureaucratic organization that radically deamplify the genocidal actions; and finally, the creation of a widely embraced model of the genocidal self through collective patterns of “nuclearism” (embrace of the weapons out of attraction to their ultimate power and to their high technology), and visions of idealistic purification and ultimate sacrifice extending even to the lure of Armageddon. Must all this happen? Some of it has already, but the rest need not. Any witness tells of the danger of some form of repetition of what one has observed, in order to encourage steps to prevent that repetition. One listens to what Loren Eiseley called “the dark murmur that rises from the abyss beneath us, and that draws us with uncanny fascination,”³ and realizes that the murmur is our own, a whisper of danger that must be heard before it becomes a hopeless genocidal scream.
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Plan: The United States federal government should allocate all necessary additional funding to non-governmental organizations for the prevention and treatment of **Human Immunodeficiency Virus**/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in Zimbabwe. We’ll clarify.
Contention 4 is solvency:
We must take action for the cause of humanity by funding NGOS to respond to AIDS in Zimbabwe
Dr. Frenk Guni, HIV/AIDS and public health policy expert and consultant, 3/30/05, “Death by Denial: A Case for Mugabe”, http://www.worldpress.org /Africa/2056.cfm [jsidney]
This is a time for decisive leadership, a time for action, a time to put aside political demagoguery; this is a time to think and act for the cause of humanity. We need to re-focus and channel resources to rebuild and strengthen Zimbabwe’s health care and response mechanism. Agreed, there remains a question of accountability on the part of the Zimbabwe government, but surely there are ways to go around that threat. For instance, channel the AIDS response funds through the United Nations Theme Group on H.I.V./AIDS or through the World Health Organization or more directly to N.G.O.s — not withstanding the recently passed N.G.O. Bill of Zimbabwe which to this day the president has not assented to. The bill in material terms does not prohibit external funding to N.G.O.s that are providing humanitarian services not linked to the internal politics of Zimbabwe.If we do not act fast and now, history and posterity will judge us all for our inaction. Zimbabwe’s children are a generation in peril and it’s our time to show that we care. Yes it is our time to show that the international community will stand by the most vulnerable and weak in their time of need. It is not the “body politick” that has H.I.V./AIDS in Zimbabwe and are bearing the burden of care. But it is the ordinary men, women and children who are now looking up to the international community for their own survival.
Mugabe empirically allows unconditional aid when needed
The Telegraph, 5/20/05, “Mugabe admits he needs food aid to rescue Zimbabwe,” <http://www.telegraph.co.uk /news/main.jhtml?xml=/news /2005/05/19/wzim19.xml>
President Robert Mugabe yesterday abandoned his confident forecasts of a bumper harvest in Zimbabwe and confessed that international food aid was needed to avoid famine. Mr Mugabe, who declared last year that Zimbabweans would be "choked" if aid was "foisted" upon them, climbed down and agreed to meet the head of the United Nations World Food Programme. Having previously pledged that his seizure of white-owned farms would make Zimbabwe self-sufficient, Mr Mugabe said he would accept outside help if it came without conditions.
US leadership is key to rally support to prevent AIDS
Andrew Price-Smith, assistant professor of Environmental science and policy, and John Daly, associate professor of public administration, July 2004 (Downward Spiral HIV AIDS State Capacity and political conflict in Zimbabwe, http://www.usip.org/pubs /peaceworks/pwks53.pdf p38)Prevention solves—empirically proven
Lori Bollinger and John Stover, economists with the Futures Group International, 9/99, “The Policy Porject, The Economic Impact of AIDS in South Africa”